Books In Review

On the New Frontiers of Genetics and
Religion

Not Much Help

On the New Frontiers of Genetics and Religion. By J.
Robert Nelson. Eerdmans. 212 pp. $12.99.

Reviewed by Gilbert Meilaender

We are badly in need of books that will help us engage in moral and
religious reflection upon recent mind-boggling advances in genetics.
Unfortunately, On the New Frontiers of Genetics and Religion
will not meet that need. It provides some useful information in brief
compass (indeed, that is probably its most helpful feature), but it does
not succeed in its attempt to explore the religious implications of
genetic advance.

J. Robert Nelson writes that "the year 1953 is to genetic science what
1492 is to geography." In that year James Watson and Francis Crick
published their now famous article describing the structure of DNA. The
decades since then have been marked by an astonishing pace of advance in
genetics, funded now in considerable measure by our tax dollars. The
Human Genome Initiative, a combination of projects aimed at mapping the
human chromosomes and locating the genes on the chromosomes, is to be
completed over fifteen years at a cost of some three billion dollars.
However strong the motives that drive a purely scientific desire to
know, the Congress would not have committed itself to such a project if
it did not hold out the hope of genuine advance in our knowledge of
hereditary diseases.

A good bit of such advance has already taken place. Nelson writes that
at least four thousand single-gene diseases (diseases caused by a single
mutant gene rather than by some combination of genes or by a combination
of genetic and environmental factors) are now known, and about two
hundred of them can be diagnosed prenatally. No doubt the numbers are
larger now than when he wrote. Despite this astonishing progress, and
despite the fact that we surely stand on the verge of more
breakthroughs, we find ourselves in some ways returning to the condition
of medicine before the great age of antibiotics dawned: We are able to
diagnose far more than we can treat. That condition raises many
troubling questions with which we need help.

Nelson is a theologian working in the Institute of Religion at the Texas
Medical Center in Houston. That Center sponsored two conferences (in
1990 and 1992) on "Genetics, Religion, and Ethics." This volume reports
on those conferences and summarizes the views of some participants.
After the first chapter's introduction to the topic, chapter two-perhaps
the most valuable in the book-describes briefly and clearly advances in
genetics and the therapeutic possibilities currently available.

Chapters three and four take up moral questions raised by the Human
Genome Initiative and its implications for our understanding of human
nature. These chapters are considerably less helpful. Lacking any clear
argumentative thread of their own, they mostly summarize views of
different participants in the conferences. Such summary tends to lose
the complexity of argument. The reader who already knows something about
the issues is not likely to advance in understanding, while the reader
who knows little will not learn enough to enter deeply into the issues.

Chapter five summarizes-and in some cases reprints extensively-"personal
religious positions individually expressed" by conference participants.
Chapter six, by contrast, summarizes briefly several "official"
statements of religious bodies and includes a helpful analysis of these
statements by Audrey Chapman. A reader who has made it this far is
likely to conclude-as Chapman does, albeit politely-that the statements
don't help much in bringing religious faith to bear upon genetics.
Nelson's own brief concluding chapter attempts to make some progress
toward that end (via a rather puzzling use of Tillich's notion of
"correlation") but, clearly, much more is needed.

What "more," in particular? Because we are at present able to diagnose
many more hereditary diseases than we can treat, the "treatment" of
choice has become prenatal diagnosis (still most commonly by means of
amniocentesis) followed by abortion of fetuses with defective genes.
This fact, straightforwardly recognized by Nelson, begs for analysis and
critique. Evidently, however, the participants in the two conferences
upon which this book is based were unable to provide it. Summarizing, I
think, views of conference participants, Nelson says of prenatal
screening:

In some circumstances the disclosure of true
data results only in a satisfactory outcome. Prospective
parents can learn that some fears of their infant's
manifesting spina bifida or cystic fibrosis are needless
after all. Or they can terminate a pregnancy, however tragic
that may be, in order to avoid the birth of a grossly
malformed or severely retarded baby. We recognize, however,
that the definition of a "satisfactory outcome" to a
pregnancy varies widely according to differing evaluations.

Only in instances of prenatal diagnosis used to select the sex of one's
child (by aborting a child of the undesired sex) did many conference
participants seem to draw the line, since in these circumstances, Nelson
writes, "it is not the will of the prospective parents but the
inviolable life of the fetus which prevails." Given the tenor of the
rest of the book, "inviolable" is a strange choice of adjectives.

Prenatal diagnosis accompanied by abortion for genetic defect is a
serious issue, and the discussion of its moral significance ought not be
simply folded into general discussions of the pros and cons of abortion.
As such a procedure gradually becomes routinized, it must raise
questions about the depth of our commitment to the norm of equal
respect. Some children will always be born with disorders, having
slipped through our tests, and others will become physically or mentally
disabled after birth because of illness or injury. How will we feel
about them when we have gradually raised our standards for what is
acceptable and normal in a child? At this moment in time, when we can
diagnose more than we can treat, we may teach ourselves to blur the
distinction between preventing genetic disease and preventing a
genetically abnormal person. It may not be as easy as we think to repeat
again our culture's slow, laborious development of a norm of equal
respect for all human beings.

That children can be damaged in countless ways after birth also means
that the routinization of prenatal diagnosis accompanied by abortion is
poor preparation for motherhood or fatherhood. As Barbara Katz Rothman
has written, "Motherhood is, among other things, one more chance for a
speeding truck to ruin your life." Learning to love without condition or
qualification the child one has been given is a lifelong task-and
certainly the most important task for prospective parents. Yet, as
prenatal diagnosis followed by abortion establishes itself as accepted
medical practice, we train ourselves to love less heroically and more
conditionally. Surely, such a practice calls especially for religious
examination and analysis.

Among the "personal religious positions individually expressed" in the
book is a brief statement by Gerald McKinney. With his vision shaped by
the study of Calvinist theology, McKinney nicely notes that "genetic
knowledge gives persons a sense of fate." And the rapidly expanding
scope of such knowledge will, he suggests, "force upon us a much deeper
awareness of the sheer givenness of human life and its utter
imperviousness to the deep illusions that we are naturally the products
of our own making." Perhaps it will. Or perhaps, rebelling against such
"givenness," we may try still more fervently to take control of our life
and shape our destiny.

Christianity first expanded into a Gentile world weighed down by an
oppressive sense of fate-the biblical language of "principalities and
powers." In such a world the announcement that these powers could not
separate us from the love of God revealed in Jesus, the message that the
risen Lord had ascended to the right hand of God with all powers subject
to him, was good news indeed. In this respect also we need religious
critique of and reflection upon the powers that hold us in their grip.
We need to learn again where we ought to look for deliverance. Helpful
as it is in providing some basic information, this volume will not, I
fear, meet our most pressing needs.

Gilbert Meilaender is the Francis Ward and Lydia Lord Davis
Professor of Religion at Oberlin College.